Sorry for the misunderstanding. For comparison I used the N 10 fed into the Empirical Audio Overdrive SX (using a Stealth Varig 16 coaxial cable). At that time my regular set up was the mac mini/berkeley alpha fed into the overdrive sx. For several reasons I abandoned the overdrive sx and replaced it with the M1 gold edition. The M1/ethernet is far superior to either set up in terms of convenience and more importantly sound quality.
I would hazard that the shift from USB convertor / fixer to Ethernet is part of the upgrade you are experiencing. I heard the same going from the OffRamp 5 and USB to Rednet Ethernet.
Going back to the Davinci comments, I would also hazard that is the natural sonics from a good NOS design with no filtering and chip logic, i.e. straight through, no messing.
Half of these subjects become over compacted by peoples obsession with data conversion to DSD or upsamplng. If you stay as resident sample rate on a true NOS DAC, it sounds more natural anyway to me. Ditch the messing around with the file, just feed the DAC as it was intended, i.e. same resolution.
The possible 'improvements' in sound by messing with the data rate may help with some DS designs, but ones I have tried just make it worse IMO.